


It's Just A Figure Of Speech

by wesleyfanfiction_archivist



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-02
Updated: 2005-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7094527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wesleyfanfiction_archivist/pseuds/wesleyfanfiction_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Orpheus," Wes thinks about Lilah after her death and explains a few things to Fred... and that pesky voice in his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just A Figure Of Speech

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Versaphile, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [WesleyFanfiction.net](http://fanlore.org/wiki/WesleyFanFiction.Net). Deciding that it needed to have a more long-term home, I began importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact the e-mail address on [WesleyFanfiction.net collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wesleyfanfiction/profile).

***

He had noticed her watching him. Had noticed how she would look away whenever he turned to look at her. He had a sneaking suspicion that he knew what this was all about. 

"He's damn near perfect… Except the part about banging Lilah for the past six months."

Looking at her now, he wondered if she really was as intelligent as he thought. There were so many things she knew about physics and maths and science, but she really knew nothing about the real world. Well, she did spend a long time in another dimension; you can hardly blame her. She really didn’t seem to understand that love was not always the sweet stuff of movies. Not that he was in love with Lilah. Oh no, of course he wasn’t. And that gutted feeling he got whenever he remembered she was dead had nothing to do with any feeling he had for her. She didn’t love him either. When he saved her from the Wolfram and Hart building, she wasn’t going to say she loved him, because she couldn’t. She wasn’t able to feel. She had used him as much as he had used her. And he didn’t want to make the Beast hurt for killing her, and when he cried after he cut off her head, it was just the stress. She wasn’t his girlfriend, or a loved one. She couldn’t feel.

And neither could he.

But there was always that nasty little voice in his head that whispered to him whenever he thought those kinds of things. She would look at you sometimes though, wouldn’t she, Wesley? Look at you in a way no else ever did. Not Virginia and definitely not Fred. 

He hated that voice. He sighed heavily, rubbed his eyes and returned to his books. It was late and they were both still working. She because she saw it as the only way to save the world. He for the same reason, but also because he saw it as the only way to save his sanity. Whenever he slept, he had nightmares about decapitating Lilah, about standing there watching as Angelus drained her. 

But you have dreams about her too, don’t you? You dream about a normal life. Only you can't have a normal life with a corpse. Especially after you cut her head off. 

But still you dream, Wesley, still you dream.

"Is there something you wanted, Fred?" Wesley asked mildly, not looking up from his book, but he saw her jump and look round at him.

"What? No! I don’t want anything."

"Are you sure?" he looked up, "only you keep looking at me and if there's something you wanted to ask me, please feel free."

"I - I just was wonderin'…"

"About what?" she hesitated and his face softened slightly toward her, "you can tell me, Fred."

"Lilah," she blurted out.

"Ah," was all he said, and bowed over his book again. She fidgeted slightly, wary of his reaction, "what was it you wanted to know, exactly?"

Stunned, she stared at him as she gathered her thoughts. 

"You - you don’t mind?"

"Of course not," he replied, "what was it you wanted to know?"

"I wondered… I wondered… how? How did you two…?"

"She visited me," he leaned back in his chair, his eyes distant, "I was very much alone, of course. She visited. She gave me "Dante's Inferno," she was making a point. Did you know, Fred, that the worst place in Hell is reserved for traitors?"

"N-no, I didn’t know…"

"Well, Lilah kindly pointed that out to me. And the rest, as they say, is history."

His mild attitude, the slightly jocular tone was entirely false and sounded so, even to his own ears. But that was the only way he could force this out and he had to, if only to stop her looking at him as though she pitied him. He couldn’t bear her pity. If she pitied him, it was as though he had lost someone close, someone he loved. He hadn't really. She was a lawyer, an evil lawyer. He really had not feelings either way. Really, Wesley? Then why do you force yourself to be cheerful? You know you want nothing more than to curl into a ball and cry. What does that mean, eh?

"Do you miss her?"

She had obviously gained in confidence and she asked her question as she sat down, pulling her glasses off as she did so. 

The question threw him and he didn’t know how to answer it. He wasn’t sure he was ready to answer that question to himself, let alone her. But you'll have to one day and it's not as though you don’t already know the answer, is it?

"Would it matter if I did?" he asked instead.

"Yeah," she answered.

"Why?"

"'Cause if you miss her, you musta cared about her and that makes all the difference."

"I don’t see how."

"She musta been a decent person under all the… evil lawyer-ness. Otherwise why else would you do it?"

"I…" he glanced down, rubbed one hand over his face before the honest answer he had been dreading slipped out of his mouth, "I was lonely."

"Lonely?" she repeated.

It was as though the thought had not occurred to her. Of course it hadn't, she was too wrapped up in her own world. A world where I was the traitor, where I didn’t matter.

Rage boiled in the pit of his stomach and he desperately wanted to get out of the office. It was too closed in, too confrontational. He couldn’t bear it.

"Yes, Fred," he snapped, standing up, "I was lonely. My throat had been cut; my friends had made no attempt to understand my actions and abandoned me. Lilah - despite her faults - was all I had."

With that, he strode from the office, leaving her sitting in his old office, staring at where he had been seated.

***

"Wesley?" Fred ventured. 

She had spent quarter of an hour searching for him and found him in the room where he had decapitated Lilah. He was staring out of the window and showed no sign of noticing her. 

"Wesley, I didn’t mean -"

"She rarely called me by my name, you know. When she did it was mostly Wes. I never really realised until now. Huh. Funny the things that stick in your mind."

"I never realised how lonely you were… If I'd known, I would've come to visit you."

"Would you?" he turned and smiled at her, "I wonder if things would have been different if you had?"

"I guess we'll never know."

"Yes, I suppose you're right."

"You did care about her, didn’t you, Wes?"

He turned around and sank into a chair, a cloud of dust masking his face for a moment. When it cleared, she saw he had what she privately called his "Thinking Face." 

"Sit down, Fred," he said softly.

She sat slowly down in a chair opposite him, "Wesley…?"

"I believe it's time I talked about this… Maybe you'll understand."

"I'll try… So, did you care about her?"

"No," he answered, "not in the beginning. Though, it was I who first called what we had a 'relationship.' We had a bet on, you see, as to who would be first. I should have known I would lose, after all, Lilah was very well versed in keeping her emotions in. There's a signed dollar bill in my wallet. I can't seem to bring myself to throw it away. I guess that means I cared about her."

Or was it because of what that dollar symbolises? You remember how she looked at you when she asked you to sign it. You remember why she wanted it signed, don’t you? "Proof of now. Of this." Oh, of course you cared about her.

"How could you? She was your enemy."

Sleeping with the enemy, Wesley. How Lilah would have laughed at that.

"Not really. She was Angel's enemy. I was really nothing to her; I was just one way of getting to Angel. That always puzzled me. When she came to me this summer, I was not a way of getting to Angel. Yet she came anyway."

"Maybe she cared about you."

"She couldn’t," he said sharply, "she couldn’t feel anything. She… She just couldn’t…. At least that’s what I keep telling myself."

"But do you believe it?"

You don’t, do you? Of course you don’t. You cared about her and that eats away at you, you can't bear to admit it to yourself. But you did, didn’t you, Wes?

"Do you remember when the Beast entered Wolfram and Hart? I got her out and for a moment, I thought she was going to say she loved me. Do you know, I was terrified? If she had said it, what then? I don’t know what I would have done."

"But if she'd said it, would you have believed her?"

"I honestly don’t know. Fred, love isn't always a good thing. Feelings like that can be destructive, they don’t always make a person happy. Sometimes they can make a person hate themselves and what they have become. I hope you never have to experience that."

"I'm sorry you had to. Can I ask you…? Do you - do you miss her?"

"When I remember she's gone," he replied, "other times, I forget."

Because you want to, because you can't bring yourself to remember she's gone. If you do, what then? If it hurts, what will you do? How will you explain it?

"When you do remember though, what then?"

"Then?" he asked, "I don’t know. I don’t let myself get that close."

"Why not?"

"Because," he looked at her, heartbroken sincerity etched into his face, "because it scares me. If I feel something now, that means I felt something then, still feel something."

"Would that be so bad?"

"Yes… Because in a way she was my enemy. A person who worked for the very same people I fought against. She believed in things and I believed in their opposite. Who am I if I feel something for someone like that?"

Not the man you want to be. Not the man you thought you were or could be.

"Human," Fred shrugged, "you can't stop what you feel, you just feel it. Don’t you sometimes come close to feeling something when you think about her? Before you close yourself off, I mean."

"Sometimes."

"And?"

"And… It hurts. It hurts like you wouldn’t believe. And that's only when I come close, when I near the edge but don’t fall off it. What Lilah and I had was twisted and dark… And part of me liked it… The rest of me wanted to save her. I saw something in her that I thought I could save, redeem maybe. I miss her… Not because of the sex, because of her. The way she dressed, effortless elegance. The way she smiled, I never realised a woman's smile could be so dangerous and alluring. The scent of her hair, it was camomile, you know. I was surprised, such a soft scent for such a hard woman. Her eyes, if you see them without make up, they really are quite pretty, girl-like. I guess that’s why she always hid them under makeup. Oh, and her bloody arrogance, she was always so sure of herself, it didn’t matter if she screwed up, she was always so damned arrogant. She always seemed to be in control, even when she wasn’t. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be like that. She intrigued me."

"So you did love her?" Fred asked, watching as he got slowly out of his chair and headed toward the door to return to work.

"Love, Fred," Wesley replied, "is just a figure of speech."

But that doesn’t make it any the less real, does it, Wesley, old boy?

THE END


End file.
